Rose Kula re-enters Manchester music scene

The building has since been knocked down, but it is the stuff of legends that a Tuesday night blues jam at the establishment ushered in a number New Hampshire blues jams held around the Granite State today. Kula was playing there in a duo on Wednesdays and Sundays. It was a happening spot and Kula started waiting tables there.

Wan-Tu’s promotion manager Brenda Cadieux talked to Kula about a third anniversary of Johnny Bad’s and it became a celebration of the whole B.T. C. reunion and getting former participants together. Kula didn’t mind doing a B.T.C. reunion but she didn’t want to be the feature of a B.T.C. jam reunion because she didn’t really participate in the blues jam as much as she did her duo gigs in that room.

Kula hasn’t been very active in the music scene the last few years. She has been busy raising a child. “I wasn’t planning on having children, and when I was thirty I got pregnant,” she said. “I don’t do anything half-way. I’ve been raising my son. He’s 14 now. When I worked in the duo I played seven nights a week, so it was a pretty big adjustment to make.”

In the old days Kula shared her Gypsy Revenue duo with a singer-songwriter named Karl Weber. Folk rock originals, Paul Simon songs, Van Morrison songs, Melissa Etheridge songs, and Indigo Girls song were played with backing tracks and interspersed with Gypsy Revenue originals. Videos of Gypsy Revenue are available on YouTube under Karl Weber’s name.

Wan-Tu Blues Jams used a tasteful nude picture of Kula wit her guitar to promote the B.T.C. reunion. The picture came from an idea Kula had when she was 22 years old. She wanted a picture like that on the cover because Hank Williams had album covers with pictures of tastefully nude women posed with guitars. Kula ended up not using the picture because Melissa Etheridge used a similar concept, and Kula didn’t want to be a copycat. A lot of Wan-Tu fliers had cartoon drawings of women with guitars. “I thought it’d be fun to send (Brenda Cadieux) that and see what she wanted to do with it,” Kula said.

Kula doesn’t consider herself a professional model, but she did work as a nude model at Boston Museum of Fine Art school and the Decordova. She was working it four to five times a week for two years. It was mostly painters and sculptors that she posed for. She once worked with a group called Model In Motion. Kula was required to put music on and dance around in the nude. The group, which Kula worked for for two years in Western Massachusetts , wanted to capture energy by having the model moving around. Kula attended the shows in which the paintings were displayed.

Kula may have left a huge impression on New Hampshire’s seacoast: “On the seacoast, there’s a sculpture that was inspired by my butt,” she said. She got into modeling through a roundabout path. Kula and her then boyfriend were spotted by someone who was intrigued by their motorcycling outfits. A morning photo shoot got too hot for leather and Kula’s gypsy head dress. After taking their jackets off, the person in charge said they usually do nudes and asked Kula if she would receptive to that. She consented.

Kula released a CD in the year 2000 called Faint Glimpse, her songs inspired by failed relationships. “I used to make the joke that I used to sabotage my relationships to write good songs,” she said. Oddly enough, Her song “Scotch Pines” was inspired by somebody else’s view of what would make somebody else’s life complete. “That’s the first song I ever wrote with somebody else’s thoughts in mind,” she said. “I’d have to say all the rest were inspired by relationships and just things that have happened to me in my life.”

Kula does not have a favorite song on her CD, yet “Kaleidoscope Of Fear” came from an immediate, unrelenting source. She sang it and recorded it in one take. Kula was having issues with breathing after she had a car accident which makes her back tighten up and her diaphragm lock up. Being in a studio instead of live settings also made her uptight. The fear she sang about was quite real. She feels she could have made a better album technically, but she is happy with being in the moment in each song, expressing its emotive qualities.

On the inside jacket Kula is posed scantily clad in black undergarments. Her image is inside of a large keyhole image. She got the keyhole idea from a friend’s son. From the boy’s perspective it was not a peeping Tom thing. It was about peering into the mystery of life and adventure.

“That hit many levels at once,” Kula said. “If you’re an adult, you could be looking at it as suggestive. At the same time the album’s being called Faint Glimpse, it’s sort of symbolizing that you may be seeing me close to being naked but that’s only the tip of the iceberg of what is the real essence of anybody.”

By the time Kula got around to making the CD and doing the photo shoot, Melissa Etheridge, again, trumped her by doing a keyhole cover. “I put it on the inside cover because I didn’t want to be copying somebody,” Kula said.

Kula has started going to go to jams again because she has written some songs and she needs to shop around to see who would be available to record with. She also wants to get feedback from her fellow musicians. Her songs usually come to her words and music together, but she has an acappella song tentatively titled “Rockin’ Still” that came to her while showering.

“I started to try to put it to music and I decided to wait. I wanted it to be more complex than what I usually pull out musically, from the arrangement perspective. After I sang it (at the jam) two people came up to me and wanted to write music for it.” Local musicians Bob Pratte and Scot Gibbs, she said, will be working with her.

Kula is mystified by her own songwriting process. She said that songs come “through her” rather than come to her. “I’m just a like a printer printing out the song. That’s how the song came. I wasn’t thing about writing a song about whatever,” she said.

Kula owns a cleaning company called Kula Cleaning Service, keeping herself employed. Kula first came on the scene in 1985. Kula went to work in bars to find out what people were looking for. “It was calculated,” she said. She was born in Manchester and she grew up in Goffstown before settling in Bedford.

Rose Kula is on Facebook.